Renowned Portuguese painter Maria Helena Vieira da Silva has written a dedication in an exclusive French biography.
Dedication by Maria Helena Vieira da Silva to “Elisa” on the first page of a short French biography of the Portuguese painter (1950).
11 pages.
In French.
14 cm x 19 cm.
No location information, 1950s.
Perfect condition of conservation.
Unique piece.
Born in Lisbon, Vieira da Silva began studying drawing and painting at the city's Academy of Fine Arts when she was only 11 years old. As a teenager, she expanded her artistic interests to include the study of sculpture, and as a young adult she moved to Paris, where she studied painting with Fernand Léger. In 1930, she married the Hungarian painter Árpád Szenes. Except for a brief stay in Lisbon and a period in Brazil during World War II, Vieira da Silva continued to reside in Paris for the rest of her life.
By the 1950s, when she wrote this dedication, Vieira da Silva had become internationally known for her dense, complex compositions, influenced by the art of Paul Cézanne and the fragmented forms, spatial ambiguities, and restricted palette of Cubism. She exhibited her work widely, winning a prize for painting at the São Paulo Biennial in 1961 and the Grand Prix Nationale des Arts from the French government in 1966. In 1988, the Gulbenkian Museum in Lisbon and the Grand Palais in Paris presented a major retrospective of the artist’s work.
In addition to the beautiful dedication to Elisa (an unidentified person), what draws attention here is the delicacy of the whole: this small French biography, produced in a very limited edition of 54 copies, on laid paper, in perfect condition and with high-quality reproductions and texts. Maria Helena Vieira da Silva had this delicate intention in the 1950s, at the height of her career.
